This was the first single from The Shins' third album Wincing the Night Away. The song was released as a digital download in November 2006 with physical copies available for fans to order the following week. In an interview with Billboard, The Shins' lead singer James Mercer described this song as "a hypothetical, fictional account of a young lesbian couple in high school dealing with the s--tty small town they live in."
The title does not appear in the lyrics to this song. A "phantom limb" is a sensation that your arm or leg is still there even when it has been amputated. It makes a great metaphor for odd disconnect.
The video for this song features The Shins and children acting out dramatizations of the stories of Joan of Arc, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and the Donner Party.
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